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Maybe. She was proud of her accomplishments. She had worked hard for them.

It just wasn’t an assumption around here that people would go on to have higher education. It had been interesting to actually be at school. Many of the people that had been there had found it to be compulsory. Like moving on to the next grade in high school. Not a discussion at all, but an inevitability. It wasn’t like that here. It never had been. Many people expected to go into some kind of trade. Many of the women expected to get married, to be a ranch wife.

But not Quinn. Even before her father had defected, that hadn’t been her goal.

But after... Well, afterward it had become even more important to her that she got an education. That she made her own way.

Because she had seen what could happen to a woman when she made her entire world a man, and that man left.

Her mother had collapsed.

She had never been the same.

She’d been less hostile to Fia, so in that sense it was good. It was like her dad leaving had let all the air and anger out of the place. But at the same time... She just hadn’t been her. She’d been like a shell of the woman she’d been. It was hard to be both grateful for it and mad about it, but Quinn managed.

Even now that her mom was living in Hawaii, basically in paradise, living her best life, she wasn’t the same person she’d been before.

She would probably say she was happy. Away from the tiny town of Pyrite Falls, away from the grind of ranch life. Living on island time and enjoying dating around and lunching with friends.

Quinn had gone to visit her mother on a couple of different school breaks.

It was beautiful there.

And her mother seemed like a new person surrounded by all the sea. Even though it was good in many ways, Quinn had issues with it.

And Quinn didn’t want to be changed by a man, even if that change took her to Hawaii.

Quinn wanted control.

To be in charge of her own destiny, and to heck with anybody that tried to meddle in it.

Including Levi.

Thinking the guy was hot didn’t give him permission to get under her skin.

She wasn’t a romantic.

Appreciating him in a visual sense didn’t mean he got to control her emotions.

Maybe that was part of her problem. She had vanquished her anger just a little bit too well. Maybe she needed to call upon it, even if it was just to fuel her through today.

She couldn’t really be mean to him, because he did have a point: she needed him.

But she could be intense. She was very good at that.

Then she rounded the corner in the winding gravel drive, and looked up and saw a massive house. Absolutely huge. With big, brightly lit windows, and what looked like a chandelier inside.

It was gorgeous. Rustic and modern all at once, and she wasn’t quite sure how it managed to be both of those things, but it did.

That asshole.

He had been absolutely playing her.

She had driven up and thought that she could easily identify that he had a need based on how meager his living situation was, but his living situation wasn’t meager at all. In fact, it made the Sullivans’ farmhouse look like a dollhouse.

She got out of the car, clutching her coffee service tightly in her hands, holding it just a bit too tightly, until her knuckles began to ache.

That absolute bastard.